what the heck is a recipe

Roast chicken and veggies with Italian dressing! (Pictured after half of it was consumed, sorry)

This is a weird mix of too simple to write up and too specific and complicated to be useful for this blog, but it got rave reviews so I thought I'd post it. Anyway, so, I used to pour Italian dressing over all my mom's Sunday roasts and I wanted this to taste like that but fancier.

So.

You will need:

-chicken (I used a breast and a thigh; you can do this with other meats or meat substitutes but mind the timing differences. If you can, combining light and dark cuts is nice, if not don't worry about it.)

-veg (potatoes and whatever; I use broccoli. Green vegetables probably taste better with the dressing but you do your thing.)

-oil (vegetable, olive, whatevs)

-spices (I like salt garlic and rosemary)

-Italian dressing - I made some but buy it if that's lower spoons for you. Or you could use any other oil and vinegar! Whatever you like.

Dressing recipe:

Take three parts oil to one part vinegar (any vinegar except white vinegar). Add some salt, garlic, red pepper (I actually just used Tajín Clásico bc it owns my soul), some of that cheap sprinkly Parmesan-style cheese if you have it, and a dash of lemon juice. Maybe like a tsp or two of each for a half a bottle of dressing? Shake until combined.

The dish itself:

Take out some chicken, preferably thawed, ideally room temperature. I salted mine the night before because Salt Fat Acid Heat told me to, but honestly the difference wasn't massive. Just get it thawed.

Take some potatoes. Chop them into a size that you can put in your mouth. If your other veg is hard - like carrots - go ahead and put that in too.

Rub a little oil and a lot of spices over your chicken and your potatoes. Put the lot in the baking dish.

Bake this for about half an hour to forty minutes (depending on size) on a relatively high temperature - like, 425F-ish.

Take the chicken out, put a little of the dressing on and toss again. Also, check how done your potatoes are. Turn the oven down to 350F.

Cook this for as long as you think your potatoes will need. It depends on how big they are, but I'd check em after twenty minutes or so.

When the potatoes are soft and cut easily with a fork, pull them out. Continue to cook the chicken until it's falling off the bone and/or tender to the fork. This could take anywhere from another 10-20 minutes. Just have a poke at it every so often.

When the chicken is ready, put it aside to rest. If you're using soft vegetables, put these in for 5-10 minutes in the chicken cooking juices.

Hi! I haven’t made anything new or interesting until today so I haven’t updated.

Anyway, I made this today and it was good and my partner said I should post it, but it’s not really interesting, so this is more a “how to zhuzh up a flavor packet you bought at the grocery store for twenty cents” post.

Also, this is very low spoons, at least for me, but doesn’t taste low spoons, so...yes.

You will need:

-Chicken (or whatever or nothing if you don’t need/have protein)

-Flavor packet - I mean, pesto, ideally, but I’ve done something similar with buffalo chicken

-Other seasonings - I used garlic, dill, and some italian seasoning, anything that complements your packet.

-Some sort of bullion cube or stock, probably, or milk could work?

Optional but important for the end goal:

-Onions (they make things taste richer but I often don’t have them in the house, ymmv)

-Something cheap but creamy-tasting (I used leftover blue cheese dressing I happened to have in the house; yoghurt might work, especially if you mix it with a bit, TINY BIT, of mayo, or sour cream would be fine too. The point is something with a little bit of fat in it.)

The process:

Brown your onions and fresh garlic  if you got ‘em/have the energy to use them. If not, skip to next step.

Chop the chicken or whatever up to the size you desire, then brown it. This step is also optional because you can just boil everything together if you don’t have the energy for that. It tastes better browned, though.

Sprinkle the flavor packet over the chicken and also put in your other seasonings. Cook it a little bit more, until it looks like it’s more or less mostly done.

Pour in the stock or whatever. Important: don’t use water unless you have nothing else. Your packet probably claims you should use water. It is a coward. Water is okay if you don’t have an alternative, but use stock or milk if you can because It Tastes Better!

How much? Idk. However much pasta you want, put in that much stock and a little bit more, probably. 

Dump your uncooked pasta in there and cook it til it’s done. If you find your pasta isn’t done but your sauce is running dry, you can put water in at this stage because you’re going to boil it back out. But just a bit at a time. (Or you can continue to use stock.)

Then put in just enough of your creamy-tasting paste to make it a nice smooth creamy texture. To Taste, in other words.

Cornbread!

I’m not good baker but this is very easy and I’ve been eating it since I was a kid. Passed down from my grandmother to my mother to me. The photo on the the recipe in the Fannie Farmer Cookbook which I angrily overwrote with the CORRECT recipe from my mom. I could just post this but there’s other things I disagree with that you need to know about so I’m typing it up for you.

You will need (sorry about the American measurements, let me know if you have any idea how to convert these to weights): 

-cornmeal, 1 cup

-flour, 1 cup

-brown sugar, 1/3 of a cup

-baking soda, 1 teaspoon

-salt, 1 teaspoon

-buttermilk, 1 1/2 cups, but honestly just make clabbered milk, instructions below in recipe: for this you’ll need milk and some kind of acid like vinegar or lemon juice

-eggs, 2

-butter, shortening, bacon grease, or whatever, 1/2 cup (best if you make it liquid before cooking but whatever)

-cast iron skillet, or you can use whatever baking pan but my grandmother will begin manifesting physically in your home (no really though it’s fine, anything shallow and wideish like a brownie pan)

-some tinfoil, possibly

Procedure:

preheat the oven to AT MOST 400F, maybe 350F if you’re using a cast iron skillet (the picture Is Wrong). 

Reason: If you’re doing this in a brownie pan it might be okay, but if you’re doing it in a skillet, the top gets really browned way way before the middle is cooked. The pictured cornbread above was baked at 400F for just fifteen minutes and the top got browner than I’d like. I then had to cover it with foil and bake it for like another fifteen minutes or something to get the middle set. So, slower and lower is better. I’m still messing with this to find the optimal combination.

Anyway. Now that your oven is preheating, clabbered milk time!

Put one and a half cups of milk in a small bowl or something like that. Take like, a teaspoon and a half of your acid (doesn’t have to be precise) and dump it in the milk. Stir a bit. Set it aside until you need it. 

Okay. Take the flour, cornmeal, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt. Just mix them up. 

Now, dump in the buttermilk, eggs, and butter into the bowl and mix that up really well. The recipe above says you have to blend the eggs well before putting them in but, eh....I’ve never had a problem, so whatever. Just make sure all the wet ingredients and dry ingredients are integrated into one smooth, homogeneous, slightly weird looking mass.

Spray or butter your skillet/pan/whatever with your nonstick material of choice. 

Dump the mixture in.

Stick it in the oven. Bake until you can stick a fork inside it and it comes out clean. 

For me, this batch, that took around half an hour. This may vary depending on the shape and size of your pan. My advice is to start with 20 minutes and add ten minutes every time.

If your top browns really quickly but the middle is still gooey, just cover it up with a bit of tinfoil and you’ll be fine.

This is just slowcooker chicken with gravy. It’s extremely simple but again, partner wanted the recipe. I’ll do something more interesting and not chicken-based soon, I promise - school’s almost over.

Ingredients: -some chicken (I use breasts cause that’s what’s cheap) -spices, herbs, so forth (I’ll usually use salt, garlic, italian seasoning, and rosemary, but ymmv) -chicken stock or something (I use Better Than Bullion myself bc it’s cheap but any will work) -optional: some Vegetable if you feel the need (pictured here: broccoli, my greenest friend in these trying times) -flour for thickening if you want

-some sort of starch to serve it over if you like (see last paragraph)

Process: Dump some stock into your crock pot, slow cooker, or just a big pot. How much gravy do you want? Slightly more stock than that, because it will reduce a little. I would start with about one cup per breast of chicken, but your goals may vary.

Pop in your chicken and seasoning. FYI, bullion can be quite salty, so have a light hand with the salt if you’re sensitive to that. Salt is easy to add later, so feel free to skip it for now and add it at the end instead after you’ve cooked and tasted.

Do not put the veg in now unless it is a hard, raw vegetable such as potato or carrot!

Let it cook for a couple of hours. If you’re doing this on the stove, LOW HEAT, GENTLE SIMMER, not boiling. This is important for Not Scorching The Pan reasons.

If you’re doing this in a slow cooker, you can just put it in there and go away to work or whatever. Lower setting if you’re leaving it all day, higher if 2-3 hours. Idk what your slow cooker does. If you only have one setting it’s fine.

The chicken is ready when you can easily tear it by sticking a couple of forks in and pulling. If it is difficult to tear, it needs more time to get properly tender.

Non-hard veg goes in after you get home/when the chicken is almost done, otherwise it’ll overcook.

Taste the broth to make sure it is sufficiently seasoned, and add more if not.

Once everything is nice and cooked, if you want a good thick gravy, get yourself a cup of some time and scoop some broth in. Put in a couple of teaspoons of flour. Mix it until the lumps are gone. Put the weird flour paste back into the broth, stir, and let it cook a couple minutes. Is it thick enough for you? If not, rinse and repeat until it is.

You can skip this step and just have broth and it will still taste fine, just won’t be gravy textured!

Once it’s done you can serve it over rice, or a baked potato, or pasta, or just eat it on its own. If you make it thick enough you could put it on toast, probably.

I want to call this “beef stroganoff” because it’s essentially a slightly less ingredients-intensive version of the so-called stroganoff my mom used to make when I was a kid, but it has no mushrooms because I HATE mushrooms, and that’s kind of important for stroganoff. "Creamy beef pasta” sounds bad. So, I guess it’s beef “"stroganoff.”“ Mock stroganoff?

Ingredients: -beef, or you could use some other protein if you wanted like chicken or beans or tofu or whatever? -pasta, preferably something thick but I’ve honestly made this with spaghetti before, whatever -milk -flour (a little) -sour cream, Greek yoghurt, something like that -spices: I use salt, pepper, dill, and garlic -optional: a vegetable you can consume without complaint (I used green beans) -optional: cheese of some kind -you could put some actual mushrooms in if you like them I GUESS, but don’t ask me for instructions on how to cook them, I haven’t the faintest idea.

Steps:

-Cook the ground beef (or whatever?) with some seasonings in the biggest pan you got.

-Once it’s done, put in a lot of seasoning, some pasta, and enough milk to just about cover all the pasta. 

-Cook the pasta, milk, and beef until the pasta is Almost, but not quite, soft.

-Put in the vegetable. Cook everything together until everything is the right level of softness for you.

-If the milk reduces too much before everything is soft, you can add more, or you can add some stock if you happen to have some, or you can add water and reduce it back out again, it’s fine.

-Once you’ve got everything cooked to your satisfaction, you should have a thin milky sauce kicking around the pan. Take some flour and sprinkle it over the whole lot, one teaspoon at a time, mixing thoroughly between teaspoons. For me, it took 2-3 tsp to thicken it to the consistency I wanted it. Might be more or less depending on your quantities. If you overthicken it don’t worry, just slosh some more milk in there.

-Cook that for a couple of minutes to let it thicken. Add some yoghurt or sour cream and the cheese if you want it, cook it a little bit, and taste to see if you need more seasoning or not.

-If it tastes good, you’re done!

Note: often this kind of recipe uses something like cream of mushroom or cream of chicken soup in lieu of making a cream sauce. You can do that if you want. Honestly, it is not that difficult to make a cream sauce, you literally just mix milk and flour together, so for me it’s more energy-efficient than finding and buying cream soup. For you, however, that might not be the case, so feel free to make that choice.

Today I made potato soup (with broccoli and corn), which is what occasioned the creation of this blog. It's not very pretty, photograph it in the light from the window though I may, HOWEVER, it's an excellent thing to make if you are perpetually tired because there's no way, in my experience, to make a small amount of potato soup. The above container went into the freezer for next time I'm too tired to cook and I still probably have about a week and a half's worth of soup left or something. I used six potatoes. It is also difficult to make really bad. As long as you have a) the quantity of potatoes desired and b) at least enough liquid to cover all the potatoes, you're probably going to be find.

My, uh, "recipe" for potato soup is as follows: -potatoes -stock of some kind, chicken bullion is what I use but whatever works for you, make it a vegetable stock and the basic recipe is vegetarian  -milk of some kind  -seasoning, obviously, i use lots of garlic, salt, pepper, Italian seasoning mix, rosemary, and dill, but you can use literally whatever, just salt and pepper is fine if that's what you like, I really recommend some garlic though

optional: -other vegetables if you want, whatever's on hand, carrots, onions, broccoli, corn, anything you like -some beans or meat or something if you need more protein -cheese, whatever kind you like -greek yoghurt for more Creamy Tangy Taste (I always have some on hand bc i use it a lot but if you don't have any DO NOT WORRY just skip it, you'll be fine)The process:

-cut up the potatoes into like whatever size is bite-sized for you, and any other raw vegetables if you're gonna do others

-if you’re using onion, cook it first, you probably know the drill, just until it’s translucent and stuff

-chuck in raw ingredients and liquid and some seasoning

-regarding quantity, you’re probably gonna want ABOUT one cup of stock for each large potato, but the easiest way is just put in as much stock as covers the potatoes, add in a little more, then put in enough milk to make it look creamy

-cook (not to boiling, it will burn, just on low simmer) until you can stick a fork in the potatoes but you can’t easily cut them with the fork

-put in the cooked ingredients, cheese, and yoghurt if you're using it

-cook everything together until the potatoes can be easily cut with a fork

-taste it and see if it needs more seasoning, add more if it needs more, cook a little bit more if you season 

-OPTIONAL: if it's not thick enough (it usually isn't for me but ymmv), take some of the soup broth in a separate cup, mix in like a tablespoon of flour, then put that whole gluey mess back into the soup pot and stir

-if it's still not thick enough within ~5 minutes, repeat process, BUT do give it like five minutes because it will cook up thicker than you think.

-IF you overthicken it, it's okay, just put some more broth or milk in.

-taste it again to make sure it's good, there, you're done, congratulations on your soup!

SUPER OPTIONAL: every fancy potato soup recipe tells you to use an immersion blender to make your soup ~smooth~, by blending it partly but not all the way. I have never done this before but I recently acquired a baby immersion blender and so I tried it this time. I can report that it makes your soup smoother but it will still taste fine without this step. No worries.

I use this basic procedure for a whole range of potato-based soups, which helps it from being too boring.